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“You did?” I ask, shocked.
“I did. I wanted it to be out in the open. And he and Michael both told me what I already knew. What an idiot would know.”
“What’s that?”
“That I’m in love with you. I’m so in love with you. I…if I lose you and Izzy, my life will mean nothing.”
“I love you too,” I say, more tears coursing down my cheeks. “I think part of me has loved you since I was a kid.”
He laughs and traces my face, his arms wrapping around me. “No, I think you really hated me. But I don’t give a shit, as long as you’ve made the horrible decision to love me now. I’m going to do what I can to make sure you don’t regret it, Ruthie. I never want you to regret it. I want to make damn sure you feel as lucky as I do right now.”
“I do,” I insist, laughing and crying and wrapping my arms around him tightly, because I don’t want to let anything or anyone take him away. “I already do.”
He kisses me again, his lips claiming and consuming mine, and I give it back to him just as good, holding on to his back, his tie—to every little bit of him I can touch. Then he touches the ring around my neck, and asks, “Can I borrow this for a minute?”
A gasp escapes me, then I reach up to unclasp the necklace with shaking hands. He takes it from me, his grip on the ring steady and uncompromising, not shaking at all.
Then he gets down on one knee, one hand holding mine, the other holding the ring. “Ruthie Traeger,” he says, looking up at me. “Will you marry me again? I love you more than I thought I was capable of loving anyone. You light me up inside. You make me feel like a different man, a better one, and I never want to spend a night apart from you.”
“Yes, obviously yes,” I say, crying more. It’s a wonder where all the tears are coming from, only I guess I must have had a well of them inside of me too. Waiting. I pull him up and kiss him again, and again, and then he slips the ring on my finger.
Distantly, I hear the door crack open. “I have a bottle of champagne,” Mrs. Longhorn says with an indulgent smile. “And some sparkling grape juice for the little one. Why don’t you come on over, and then you can leave the girl over here to watch some shows so you can fornicate in private instead of out here on the open where God and all of his angels can see you.”
Damn, I’m not even mad she was spying on us.
“Thank you, Mrs. Longhorn,” I say, beaming. “I think we just might take you up on that. We need to go in and get Izzy.”
I take Shane’s hand, beaming at him, and we go inside to tell Izzy the news that we’re getting married again.
“Wait,” I say as we step inside, swinging the door shut behind us. “You do realize this means Josie the Great was right again, don’t you?”
He laughs, his eyes twinkling at me. “I’d prefer to pretend I’m just that good of a lawyer.”
Epilogue
Shane
“Leave it to you to be the first of us to get married and also the last,” Leonard says, thumping me on the back of my summer-weight suit. It’s a warm balmy day, a year and a half after I took the job at Freeman & Daniels, and we’re standing in one of the sitting rooms in the house Ruthie and I rented for the weekend for our re-wedding. It’s a rambling place, just outside of town, with extensive gardens and room for everyone to spend the night.
Since Ruthie and I were, technically speaking, already married, we weren’t in a hurry to race back to the altar. It felt important to do it right this time, which isn’t to say we’re doing it big. We only invited our closest friends and family—my mom, my friends and their wives, Ruthie’s friend Tank, who has moved past the hatred and resentment stage of our relationship and actually helps me with my car, Eden and Charlie, Freeman and his wife, Michael and his new boyfriend, Josie the Great and Poe, and Nicole and Damien. Of course, no party would be complete without the inimitable Mrs. Longhorn, who has agreed to officiate our vow-renewal ceremony. Or Flower, who’s going to be taking up flower girl duties with Izzy.
“He likes to get the last word,” Danny says, giving me a long look and a nod. I return the gesture, feeling a knot in my throat. Shit, last year my body chose to remember it’s capable of falling apart, of crying, and it’s as if it developed a taste for it. I’m not about to advertise it to my buddies, but I cried last night, when I asked Izzy if she’d be okay with me submitting adoption paperwork after Ruthie and I were married, and she said, “Of course, Dad. If you didn’t say anything, I was going to email it to you.”
“I do like getting the last word,” I admit. “I’m glad I could do it with all of you here.”
“So are we,” Burke tells me. He was the second one to get married, technically, and true to his word, he did it the day his parents’ case went to trial. He and Delia got married at the Rolf Estate, where they’d first met.
The Burkes were convicted. They’ve lost their fortune, or the bulk of it, and they’re going to spend ten years each in prison, give or take. I heard the news from my old assistant with immense satisfaction, which only had a little to do with the fact that they were represented by the man who’d tried to ruin me.
Because he may have tried to break me—but he was the making of me instead.
“But why’d you invite Nicole, man?” Burke says. “She’s out there trying to get your mother to do shots.”
I laugh at the image. “Maybe she should take one.”
My mom’s doing a lot better these days. I credit Ruthie and Izzy. Ruthie’s special project too. If it helped me to know that people still remembered my father, it helped my mother tenfold. I’d thought it would be best for her if we didn’t keep talking about him and poring over photos, and in some ways I was right. In the more important ways I was wrong. She needed to know her memories were safe before she could move on. These days, she’s trying, largely because she’s so happy about Ruthie and Izzy and me.
We’re selling my house, and after several nightmare rounds of home renovation, we’re moving in with my mother. She couldn’t be happier about it. Izzy might as well be the ruler of the known universe as far as she’s concerned.
